Last week, we went to Venice for a day – with the lovely and talented P. family.

Amazingly, Venice is only three hours drive away from Pruga – and what a change of scenery. Beautiful and special place that Venice.

Vanja and I visited Venice Biennale of Architecture, specifically we wanted to see Croatian exhibit as our lovely Architect Vjeko was part of the group exhibiting. It was very good, very relevant to Croatian political and architectural situation, very understandable to me (being Croatian and now living here) – hope the message got across. The message being “Unmediated Democracy demands Unmediated Space” or totally simply put: power to the people.

On a less serious note – we had great food, amazing gelato and fun time – to be back in Lovrinići before 10pm.

In Lovrinići, there is also food and most importantly – the pool! Me, not often being surrounded by pools and kids at the same time is a total revelation just how much kids love being in the pool, especially jumping into it. It was fantastic to watch throughout summer.

When we had no friends or family over, neighbour’s kids would come over and enjoy. Fun all around.

The drawing below sums it all up very nicely indeed.

Adult fun needs are satisfied as well here in Istria. We saw a superb jazz gig by Tamara Obrovac and her bend in Savičenta. It felt like we were teleported to one of the cute small jazz clubs in one of the world’s great cities. Yet, more rural than rural Lovrinići were just 10 miles away.

Completely different fun (and honour of course) was the fact that in Pazin (closest larger town to us) a Lyonnaise European championship 2012 was held. Lyonnaise being a form of boules. Of course we couldn’t miss the opportunity to see a game. I cannot tell you how exciting that evening was.

Moving on. I do some diy still occasionally. You may remember that in the apartments, we have stairs that take you to the galleries.

Stair frame is there since July, waiting for me to get my act together, find and buy the wood, sand, paint and varnish it. Well, in the last two weeks I kind of managed all that with two major hiccups. One that I measured one set of treads wrongly. 4cm, 4mm – whatever.

Second is that I painted and varnished one set. I kind of didn’t like the colour as I was going along, but as ever with me, there is this desire to finish things competing with the desire for things to be just the way I imagined them. So I was convincing myself that it is OK, Vanja (of course) said it was OK. But it was bugging me. Luckily (?) I ran out of the stain.

Another day, another shop, another stain. The RIGHT stain. Ha.

This week I am sanding the “wrong” set down. And why not? It will only take me few more weeks, haha.

BTW, both stains are called “walnut”. The right walnut, I feel, works much better with the floor and the walls.

There were other intricacies relating to the process of finishing these treads, but this post is getting a bit long, so I’ll stop here with the result.

On Saturday, we had a massive party here for all the neighbours (meaning everybody who lives in the village – all 32 of us) and all the builders who worked on the site for the last almost a year. I took a photo of the table before it all began and cannot believe we didn’t take any pictures during. Was too crazy I guess. You will have to believe me that there were at least 46 happy people at this table until late in the night.

It is very important in these parts to “water” the finished building. With wine of course. That way you are ensuring nothing bad will ever happen to you, or the house, or anything or anybody. Never 🙂

And community spirit is very much alive here I am happy to report. Not only every woman baked at least two cakes, they made all the bread we ate, helped with tables and benches, helped us with serving, etc, etc – really rather cool and lovely.

Washing 50+  plates by hand (still no real kitchen and consequently no dishwasher) was, well, interesting.

As well as dishes being washed by hand, the laundry is drying in the wind and sun.

On Sunday after the big party, we escaped and spent the afternoon at the beach (yep, only 35 minutes away) – this sunset was just there.

And, summer getting to its close, it is time for tomato sauce – the best food in the world. What I make (this on the last picture is only half the starting quantity (20kg), doing the rest tomorrow) will last us in the freezer until next tomato season. And yep, the tomatoes are local – a lovely women Vera here in the village is a farmer and she sold these beauties to us.

Please notice the very small stove this is being done on.